Saint John has no emergency plan in case of major industrial disaster

Despite being home to the largest oil refinery in the country, the city of Saint John doesn't have an emergency plan in place in the event of a major industrial disaster.

That's what the city said in documents obtained by Radio-Canada through right to information, following the Thanksgiving blast last year at the Irving Oil refinery.

The explosion sent five people to hospital and is believed to have injured many others.

• Timeline: The Irving Oil refinery explosion 
• Saint John mayor wants industry talks, communications review after refinery explosion-fire

The documents also reveal serious concerns over the risk of future incidents and confusion as to whether residents needed to be evacuated from the area last Oct. 8.

"Very lucky that no one was seriously injured," wrote a federal official in some of those communications.

Radio-Canada asked for internal and external emails from the City of Saint John, as well as for its plan in cases of industrial incidents.

The request generated more than 200 pages, but some details were blacked out, including reports from the hospital and information related to Irving.

'Deeply unsettling'

In a letter to the minister of public safety in the days after the explosion, Saint John Mayor Don Darling called the event "deeply unsettling" to residents of Saint John.

He said there was uncertainty and concern about the possibility of further explosions and about the potential short-term and long-term environmental effects.

"Had a number of variables been different that day … the outcome could have been far worse," Darling wrote.

Saint John fire Chief Kevin Clifford also expressed serious concern. He has been pushing for Saint John to adopt an emergency plan since 2015. 

"The City of Saint John has an industrial hazard risk profile unlike any other city in Atlantic Canada," Clifford had written at one point, citing the proximity of residential developments to the many industrial facilities.

He's pushing for a script, or playbook, of what to do in various scenarios involving industrial disasters.

But this approach, called a Community Awareness and Emergency Response or CAER plan, necessitates the collaboration of industry. Firefighters would work with each business to come up with different scenarios based on the hazards at a specific site and a play-by-play response to them by emergency responders.

Industry agrees in theory

Clifford said the industrial players have agreed on the need for CAER but have not taken the next step. 

"I certainly would like to see greater uptake, greater interest than we've been receiving, but nobody has said no," Clifford  said in a recent interview.

"We feel this community has a right to be better prepared."

Darling is also eager to move forward.

"We're now at the stage where we need increased co-operation from the industrial sites themselves, and we need the province to play a broader role," the mayor said in an interview Tuesday. "We cannot mandate that those industrial sites provide those plans. All we can do is ask for them."  

A lot still unknown

The investigation into what caused the refinery blast is still going on. 

Investigators were initially thinking it would conclude within two to three months but have blamed the dangerousness accessing the site in the weeks after the blast in part for slowing them down.

Now eight months after the incident, all that is known is that a malfunction in the unit that removes sulfur from diesel is responsible, with a failing pipe likely to blame.

But it is not clear what caused the pipe to fail — and whether it was an issue of wear and tear or some kind of chemical reaction.

WorkSafeNB is investigating, as well as the fire department and the fire marshal. Irving hired its own experts.

Irving Oil hasn't responded to any interview request since the day of the explosion.